Off The Couch

Does running have the power to transform the prison system? According to the data, it might, and it definitely has the power to ignite personal transformation, as you will see in the remarkable new documentary, 26.2 TO LIFE . Our guest today is Christine Yoo, the director and producer of 26.2 TO LIFE, which tells the story of incarcerated men at San Quentin State Prison who are members of the 1000...

The Rocky Mountain Grand Slam: it involves summiting 122 peaks and 318,000 feet of elevation gain (the equivalent of summiting Everest 11 times from sea level). And Vuori & Athletic Brewing athlete, Jason Hardrath , recently set a new FKT by completing it in under 40 days. So I caught up with Jason to break down his most recent accomplishment, and to discuss the blurring of the lines between r...

Recently at the Tahoe 200, Michele Graglia found himself in first place with an hour lead. Then he decided to stop running. So why did the former winner of the Moab 240 and Badwater 135 stop? And why, shortly thereafter, did he announce that he would be walking away from racing? Blister founder, Jonathan Ellsworth, explores these questions and more with Michele. TOPICS & TIMES: What happened a...

The 50th running of the Western States 100 took place over the weekend and delivered on all of the excitement and drama we’ve come to expect from US ultrarunning’s biggest stage. Snowy conditions in the high country weren’t enough to stymy blistering times, including a new women’s course record that’s already being hailed as the greatest single run in our sport’s history. To recap the race, Matt M...

First run in 1905, the Dipsea is the oldest trail race in the US. Its course takes runners from Mill Valley, CA to Stinson Beach, 7.4 miles separated by 700 stairs, shortcuts, thickets of poison oak, technical singletrack, and stretches of trail with nicknames like “Suicide,” “Cardiac,” and “Insult.” The race’s unique handicap format gives certain runners head starts based on age, gender, and prio...

The North Face athlete Olivia Amber is just about to roll into her second summer of 2023. Earlier this year, she set out on a 3-month road trip through South America, running and climbing (and occasionally fly fishing) from Santiago, Chile all the way down to Tierra del Fuego, an archipelago off the southernmost tip of the continent. Now that she’s been back home for a bit, we sat down to talk abo...

Leah Yingling returns to the show to discuss her partnership with Lululemon and their FURTHER initiative, a first-of-its-kind ultramarathon specifically for women; the brand’s efforts to close the sex and gender data gap in sports medicine that historically underrepresents female athletes; Lululemon’s new women-specific road-to-trail shoe, the Blissfeel Trail; how she’s preparing for this year’s s...

Even in a 250-mile race, falling 10 hours behind the leaders is an almost insurmountable gap. Almost. After some electrolyte issues threatened to derail Salomon athlete Mike McKnight’s third attempt at the Cocodona 250 this year, he found himself confronted with a choice: pull the plug and take a DNF just 70 miles in, or put his head down and try and work his way back up the field. What ensued is...

It’s probably fitting that Andrea Sansone and Andrew Hamilton met at the summit of a Colorado 14er, one of the 58 such peaks in the state that have gone on to help forge their relationship. Though neither considers themselves trail runners, the duo routinely puts up times on popular alpine routes that outpace those of the pros. Andrew has held the supported FKT for climbing all of Colorado’s 14ers...

Sarah Ostaszewski has run the Cocodona 250 all three years of its existence, each go-around shrinking the amount of time it’s taken for her to get from where the race starts just outside of Phoenix, Arizona, to where it ends 250 miles north in the town of Flagstaff. Sarah’s latest attempt on the grueling point-to-point course was her fastest yet; she finished in just over three days, good for 1st...

For the most part, competitive trail running in the US is perceived to bias heavily toward the West Coast, with many of its marquee races and popular training hubs lying left of the Mississippi. This imbalance has stoked a gentle sense of rivalry in trail runners who call the East Coast home, an underdog mentality that many — including this week’s guest, New York native and athlete for The North F...

Last time Jason Hardrath was on Off The Couch he teased a future project that involved a trip down to Mexico, a volcano, and a whole lot of running and climbing, but aside from those hints, gave no major clues as to what exactly he had cooked up. Well, during his spring break from teaching earlier this year, Jason, together with his buddy Nathan Longhurst and a lean film crew, set out to complete...

Speedland recently released their much anticipated third commission, a hyper-performance trail shoe intended for ultra-length distances, which they call the GS:TAM. So, Matt Mitchell sat down with co-founders Dave Dombrow and Kevin Fallon to catch up on all that’s transpired since their first appearance on the show back in February of 2022; how they came to adopt a commission-based model for their...

When Preston Cates popped up on most peoples’ radars with his unexpected 6th place finish at the 2021 Canyons 100k as a 23 year-old, he had a pretty simple motivation driving his young trail running career: to never have to pay for shoes again. Since then, the Boulder, CO native has racked up podium finishes left and right, landed a pro contract to run for Nike (shoes included), and recently punch...

“So, how did you get into trail running?” is an evergreen question, one that’s likely to field a variety of interesting and original responses regardless of who you ask. Underlying its premise, though, rests one of the sport’s major shortcomings, at least on the elite level. Up until recently, there existed few (if any) direct paths for new runners or athletes crossing over from different discipli...

As far as superlatives go, there’s little hand wringing about Salomon Athlete Courtney Dauwalter’s standing as one of the best ultrarunners in the world, period. In a sport known for its fickleness, she’s been outright untouchable on the trails for the past two years, riding a 15-race win streak that dates back all the way to 2021 and includes dominant victories on stages such as UTMB (where she s...

Corrine Malcolm is a true trail multi-hyphenate. In addition to running professionally for adidas TERREX and recently launching her own coaching business, Corrine also covers the sport as a writer, editor, race broadcaster, and podcast host. Matt Mitchell recently sat down with her for a grab bag conversation on topics like the relationship between writing and editing; what makes for a good interv...

Recycling old running shoes is hard, really hard. The concoction of glues, plastics, fabrics, and foams that go into making each pair can each require their own form of disposal, a drawn out sorting process that’s often as inefficient as it is unrealistic. As a result, every year millions of pairs of retired shoes end up in the dump, where many eventually spill out into the sea only to wash ashore...

Ryan Scura and Dylan Ladds have been making movies together since they were both teenagers. What began as a childhood friendship quickly evolved into a creative partnership, culminating in Dooster, the award winning production company they started several years ago. Much of the duo’s work focuses on storytelling in the outdoor community, offering an often candid lens that frames one of their lates...

The Black Canyon 100k in Arizona is one of the most competitive ultras in the US. As the penultimate Hoka Golden Ticket Race promising automatic entry into this year’s Western States 100 to the top two female and male finishers, its elite field runs deep, meaning finishing times are often blisteringly fast. The men’s course record, set all the way back in 2016, was considered among the stoutest in...

Trail running’s evolution from recreational to professional sport has not been without its own share of setbacks, and as often is the case, athletes are the ones most immediately affected by them. Facing the lack of a collective voice to confront these challenges, Nike Athlete Francesco Puppi co-founded the Pro Trail Runners Association (PTRA) in 2022 to enable an international body of elite trail...

Newly christened The North Face Athlete, Rod Farvard, returns to the show to talk about the brand’s unique Athlete Development Program, an initiative launched earlier this month to provide 17 young athletes from a multitude of outdoor sports with resources to accelerate their careers and serve as activists in the outdoor space. Rod and I talk about the critical role such programs play in continuin...

Ultra-distance trail running is a sport ripe for storytelling, something that filmmaker Jeff Pelletier recognized when he first began chronicling his adventures back in 2018. Since then, his background in video production, married with his passion for exploring the world by trail, has produced dozens of compulsively watchable POV-style films of his experiences at events like UTMB, the 205-mile Tor...

Running injuries are often talked about in hushed tones, as if mere mention could speak one into existence. While undoubtedly the suckiest part of the sport, they’re also perhaps the most inevitable, so learning how to approach them mentally can make time away from running an opportunity for growth. Saucony Athlete Katie Asmuth spent much of 2022 nursing a broken foot, yet despite being sidelined,...

La Sportiva Athlete John Kelly has speculated that one of his weaknesses is that perhaps he’s uncomfortable being comfortable, and one look at his resume sure suggests as much. After trying his hand at triathlon for a few years, a stint that included a few trips to Kona, John found his way into ultrarunning and quickly began to prod at the limits of an already extreme sport. Since then, he’s becom...